Didn't want to be rescued
by yodapopper
Summary: The CHMMR had planned to rescue all slave-shielded races; they would return the freedom to them. However, they never stopped to consider the possibility that the Spathi maybe didn't want to be 'rescued' - when their shield is broken, chaos ensues. One-shot written based on a prompt-competition by Death999 on the Pages of Now and Forever.


Prompt: Star Control-related fic, based on the words "Didn't want to be rescued". May also have gotten some degree of inspiration from Project 6014.

Written for Death999's 'getting tired for the Star Control-related fanfic contest to start' contest on The Pages of Now and Forever. Seriously, said contest has been delayed for more than half a year already; at this rate it's never going to get started, much less finish.

Regardless, here's just a short little thing I wrote up. Hope you enjoy it.

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**Didn't want to be rescued**

It seemed like, only a few years ago, things looked great. Of course, yes, they had kind of been forced into allying with the Hunams when their threat of returning the Evil Ones was, quite frankly, _more_ scary than the Ur-Quan (which were still _very_ scary, by the way), but in just a few months' time, it had all paid off. Their alliance had been an _excellent_ opportunity for them to study the Ur-Quans' slave-shield technology, and the end result had unquestionably been satisfying.

When the red shield around Spathiwa finally went up, the Spathian people had, against all odds, managed to escape from the creepy galaxy around them. For the first time since time immemorial, they were, with the exception of a few unlucky individuals who were, at the time, part of the Hunams' armed forces, _safe_.

...or so they thought. In the end, though, the very thing every Spathi knew, and which they probably should have figured out beforehand, was that even that peace, their isolation, was an illusion. They had done the one thing sensible Spathi never, _ever_ did: they dropped their guard.

Their foolishness was revealed when what first seemed like a perfectly calm, normal and peaceful day on their homeworld turned into one of the most shocking and chaotic days of their species' history. For suddenly, without even the slightest hint of a warning, there was a bright, intense wave of light, and the shield was gone. Such a thing hadn't even been thought possible; to be fair, they could lower their own shield themselves, but the possibility of others being able to do the same thing to it hadn't even been considered.

Thus, when the shield fell, revealing the big and scary universe once more and giving show to the presence of an entire fleet of large, white vessels surrounding their world, anyone who were even remotely familiar with the Spathi could probably figure out what they did next.

Panic couldn't even begin to describe it. Within moments, the whole world was beyond utter chaos as everyone and everything ran all over the place, futilely trying to do whatever they thought would help to keep them safe. Some had even thought that this was the Ultimate Evil come near, as their lack of detectors would have allowed _it_ to approach without being spotted, and the whole idea spread around the entire planet within a matter of minutes, which did nothing in the way of stifling panic. If anything, it got worse.

Seeing as the entire world's population was occupied with sheer panic, there was absolutely nobody there to listen to their few remaining hyperwave receivers which had not yet been disassembled; the orbiting CHMMRs' proclamation of the Spathi now being "free" fell on deaf ears.

The chaos eventually settled –mostly, at least– after a few of the Hunams' hours, once the CHMMR, somewhat uncertain on what to do in this situation (though really, they should have seen this one coming), managed to get a Spathi vessel, the Starrunner, to arrive and actually explain the situation to the few Safe Ones –two– whose hiding spots just happened to be close enough to their usual chamber's receiver; it had been kept for some inexplicable reason, despite the shield. Word spread, and the general panic _somewhat_ diminished; an improvement, but not by much.

Of course, once the panic wasn't fully dominating the Spathis' judgement, something else had to take its place. Completely uncharacteristically for the Spathi, who would usually just cower away before anything got even the slightest chance to cause such a thing; it was _anger_. Thus, the unfortunate CHMMR whom the Safe Ones had been directed to by Fwiffo (who was the Starrunner's captain) was forced to sit through a half-hour long lecture on every single reason why the shield could absolutely, positively, definitely, unquestionably, undoubtedly _never_ be allowed to be removed again, or their diplomatic relations would, as the Spathi put it, 'go sour'. For the Spathi wanted simply to be left alone; the CHMMR hadn't even stopped to consider the mere possibility that maybe, just _maaaaybe_, the Spathi didn't _want_ to be rescued; that they were completely happy, encased in their thought-to-be 'impenetrable' shield.

Once they managed to get the CHMMR to promise to never, _ever_ forcibly remove the Spathis' shield again, it eventually came back up, said Spathi having quadrupled the power feeding into it and thus nearly doubling its strength. As the few Spathi whom were previously locked out took this pristine moment to, as they put it, 'sneak back in', their race vanished from the stars, never to appear again. To this day, the radiant glow of the Spathi shield still encases their world, growing brighter each day as the race's safety obsession keeps causing them to forever improve it. Some even say that, at this rate, it would take less than a hundred years before not even the manufactured super-nova at the Shofixti's famed "ultimate sacrifice" during the Great War would be enough to crack it.

The universe would never see the Spathi again, and that's exactly how they wanted it.

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I guess that'll wrap up this little one-shot, then.

Comments and reviews are appreciated.


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